Opinions are like arseholes – everybody has one. Facts are more useful, but can be manipulated, spun and suppressed. If you feel something is going very wrong in the world, you’re not alone. Opinions differ on which of the many problems we face is the most important, but consider this: problems like gun control, political […]

World War 3 has already begun, but you won’t hear about it on the evening news because it is not conventional on most fronts. The combatants on either side of the line are not nation-states. On one side you have a population realizing their votes don’t count and that they’ve been lied to for decades by their government and the corporate media. On the other side, a handful of greedy billionaires, extracting wealth from the rest of us by raping the planet to death.

The primary battlefront is at Standing Rock, but skirmishes are taking place along the entire route of the Dakota Access pipeline. Additional skirmishes are happening in front of U.S. embassies and the offices of investors who have the opportunity pull their money out on January 1st, 2017, provided no oil has been pumped through the pipe by then. At this point, only one side is armed and the other is using peaceful methods to fight for all of us. The truth is that we don’t need another pipeline anywhere and building them only ensures a further delay in the necessary transition to clean energy.

If you’ve been waiting for a sign before you get off your sofa and join the Water Protectors, THIS IS IT. The Obama administration has finally taken steps to protect the water, but the incoming Trump administration doesn’t even accept the science of climate change. We are running out of time. There are no comic-book superheroes coming to save the world for us. If we love our children and their children, WE need to take action NOW. Investors can bail if no oil flows by Jan 1, 2017, so lets keep hammering the banks: NO EXTENSION for DAPL!

Throughout December we need to be telling the planet-killers LOUDLY and OFTEN that we are not having it. We need YOUR voice to make our collective shout loud enough to echo throughout the distant halls of power. Its time to take our power back by using our local networks to implement laws protecting the planet and criminalizing corruption in all its myriad forms. Please help in whatever way you can: spreading awareness using social media is one way to help, despite known censorship issues. Participating in demonstrations and/or writing letters to editors and elected representatives are both important tactics. Donating to the Water Protectors is another way to help. One day you will be able to tell your grandchildren about how you helped save the world in December 2016.

#NoNewPipelines

(Note: Revised Dec 4, 2017 due to announcement that permits were cancelled.)

Lots of people have great ideas about how to save the biosphere, but how do we figure out which ones are going to work best? After studying the issue intensely for a couple of years, I keep coming back to politics. We cannot hope to change human behaviour on a massive scale without using legislation to break our fossil fuel habit. The problem with making better laws is that Big Oil has bought so much influence over public policy that they currently have power to veto any attempts to transition the economy away from fossil fuels. We need a democracy that will respond to the will of the people to save the biosphere. Trashing Citizens United is not enough because both parties have become so thoroughly corrupt that a revolutionary shift is needed.

The best plan I’ve seen for how to do this is via anti-corruption ballot initiatives that will get the dirty money out of politics. Better still, Represent.Us is already using this approach successfully, but don’t expect to hear about this on the evening news. It is clearer than ever that the corporate media is useless, so spreading this information via social media is crucial. Don’t let anyone tell you ‘slacktivism’ is futile – that’s a lie Big Oil wants you to buy. Every problem has a solution, most have several, and you don’t have to pick just one. Deciding to share good ideas is a great place to start. If I may make a suggestion, this link is full of excellent ideas and is worth sharing widely and often: How to Fix America’s Corrupt Political System

This image pretty much sums up how greedy billionaires are destroying the biosphere. (If Clinton won, George Soros would have been pulling the strings, just like he’s been doing for Obama.) We can’t save the planet until enough people wake up and realize they don’t live in a democracy anymore. Hitler was absolutely evil, but everyone knew it. Charles and David Koch are cut from the same cloth, they have way more power than they should, and worse, they wield it in secret. They aren’t the only evil douchebag puppet-masters controlling government policy, but they are certainly among the most destructive.

If you not in a swing state, you can help boost a third party over 5% in the popular vote, which gives them ballot access in 2020. If you believe the whole game is rigged, voting for a third party is even more important because a solid showing in the popular vote now can send a message to the “duopoly” that their days are numbered.

The most important thing is to STAY AWAKE after the election, no matter who wins, and demand ANTI-CORRUPTION laws that will give the people enough power to stop corporations from destroying the planet.

I stand with Standing Rock because I recognize they are at the front line in the war to save the biosphere from greedy corporations. People need to learn the truth about who really has the power today, and why the truth is hidden. That is why I’m building AWAKEupedia, to build a collection of IMPORTANT LINKS WORTH SHARING. #ILWS is a hashtag people can use to spread awareness about any issue, including DAPL.

It is important to understand that solving any of the life-or-death problems we face requires us to ACT to take our power back. Americans will not enjoy democracy again until they dismantle the corrupt two party system controlled by Oligarchs. If you are sick seeing no progress while greedy billionaires continue raping the planet to death, consider sharing and discussing these ideas with your friends and family:

One of the saddest moments of the film was scientists blaming themselves for failing to inform the public, but that failure cannot be laid at their feet. The fourth estate – the news media – has failed spectacularly, an there is little hope for improvement now that corporate ownership is more concentrated than ever. The mainstream media frames issues and shapes public opinion. Algorithms on social media and Google are manipulated to promote the same narrow view of what is possible. Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent” exposed the Propaganda Model but having accused the media of complicity, that understanding of power was never allowed to bubble to the surface of public consciousness in America. It is time to wake up and connect the dots between political corruption, corporate malfeasance, and media complicity. We need to lay the blame where it properly belongs. As Utah Phillips said:

The earth is not dying, it is being killed, and the people killing it have names and addresses.

Before the Flood is a great documentary, but like the Paris Accords, it doesn’t go nearly far enough. I strongly recommend that in his next film, DiCaprio focus on the obstructionist fossil fuel corporations, even if they threaten to sue. If we’re too afraid to step on the toes of the oil giants, we cannot hope to stop them from destroying the biosphere. They have too much power and they are not going to give it up voluntarily. The world would be a better place if the biggest multinationals were broken up into smaller units.

The next film I want to see will focus on the current DOJ investigation of the horrifying fact that EXXON KNEW about man-made climate change in 1981 and spent decades hiding the truth and lying about it. A crime of that magnitude should result in prison for perpetrators and the company should be liquidated. Ecocide should be recognized as an International Crime Against Humanity under the Rome Statute and people of all nations should demand that their governments ratify the treaty. We need to fight to take back control of our governments and hold the fossil fuel giants to account. We can all begin by standing with Standing Rock against the Dakota Access pipeline.

I attended the town hall meeting on the Trans-Pacific Partnership in Toronto on June 15, 2016, along with hundreds of other concerned citizens, despite a lack of publicity. I recall only two people standing up to say anything in favour of the TPP and they both represented ‘industry groups’ which is a nice way of saying they were corporate shills. Everyone else was vehemently opposed, citing a variety of serious problems with the deal, particularly the odious Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which would allow even more transnational corporations to sue Canada than they already do under NAFTA. This 6000-page agreement was negotiated by corporate lobbyists in secret and isn’t about trade so much as consolidating even more money and power in the hands of the billionaires who hide behind opaque, undemocratic, unaccountable transnational corporations while they rape the planet to death, destroy democracy and shove more and more people into poverty. The TPP is NOT the ‘New Deal’ we’re looking for, and it is so clearly contrary to the interests of our nation that ratification should be considered an act of treason.

The Honourable Minister Chrystia Freeland wrote a book about Plutocrats, so she understands as well as anyone how the ultra-rich control public policy. Although we pride ourselves on being ‘better off’ than Americans whose government has been so corrupted by money they don’t even have a democracy anymore the truth is Canadians should be worried about the state of our democracy too. In our Westminster system we have this odd feature called ‘party discipline‘ which means elected representatives, with rare exceptions, have to vote the way the leader of the party says, no matter what their constituents want. This means plutocrats don’t have to bribe loads of MPs, just use the access money affords in order to influence the handful of people at the top of the party in power.

The billionaires behind the corporations that are trying to shove the TPP down our throats travel in the same circles as the Prime Minister, his cabinet and other influential advisers who are not elected. These people often have connections that are not transparent. They may have gone to school together, their spouses may be friends, they play golf together. Plutocrats have access to power and opportunities to exert influence that the rest of us cannot even see. This is the reason that our politicians don’t keep their promises.

In her 2013 TED talk about plutocrats, Chrystia Freeland placed blame for rising income inequality on abstract factors like technology and globalization, exonerating the “new global super-rich.” No wonder her Rosedale neighbours elected her to parliament. Although she calls for a “new New Deal” Freeland fails to recognize that the gains in working conditions and living standards were not gifts from politicians or generous plutocrats.

Workers fought for decades in the struggle for dignity and justice. Thousands were beaten and jailed, well over a thousand died in America, including some striker’s wives, as well as 62 children murdered in the Italian Hall disaster. The 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, resulted in 2 deaths, over 30 injuries and a virtual city-wide military occupation, in which the striker’s newspaper was shut down and it’s editors arrested. History makes it clear that the ultra-rich are not going to give up their ill-gotten gains voluntarily.

“I have a message for my fellow plutocrats and zillionaires and for anyone who lives in a gated bubble world: Wake up. Wake up. It cannot last. Because if we do not do something to fix the glaring economic inequities in our society, the pitchforks will come for us, for no free and open society can long sustain this kind of rising economic inequality. It has never happened. There are no examples. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state or an uprising. The pitchforks will come for us if we do not address this. It’s not a matter of if, it’s when.”

If the landmark study “Testing Theories of American Politics” by Gilens and Page was replicated in Canada, I believe the results would be the same. Canadian voters have no hope of having our voices heeded unless and until we reclaim democracy through meaningful electoral reform. I am sick and tired of my vote being wasted in a first-past-the-post system and sick to death of having my trust betrayed by elected representatives who serve the interests of plutocrats. I know I’m not alone in this, as evidenced by the volume of applause and cheering at the TPP town hall for the many speakers who trashed the TPP in no uncertain terms.

The gist of this message was originally sent to the parliamentary committee charged with ‘consulting Canadians’ about the TPP. I’ve lived long enough to have seen so many broken promises that I do NOT trust the government to heed the clearly expressed wishes of the electorate. Although the official consultations have now closed, I REFUSE to shut up about this. The more you learn about the potential impacts of the TPP on your life, the more horrified you will be. We need to tell our elected representatives LOUDLY AND OFTEN that ratification of the TPP would be considered an act of TREASON and that party discipline is no excuse. You can help by sharing this, emailing your own MP and encouraging your friends and family to do the same.

Every problem has a solution, most have several and you don’t have to pick just one. If you want to be part of the solution, share these ideas with your friends, family, co-workers, clients, classmates and neighbours. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

Murder. It doesn’t get much dirtier than that. We’ll never know how many organ donors declared brain-dead could have recovered if given a chance. We do know that sometimes, perhaps very rarely, people recover from being in a state considered too far gone for doctors to offer any hope. Even if this hardly ever happens, we need to allow for this possibility when organ donation protocols are designed because it is certain that some organ harvesting operations kill people who might have recovered full function. In Texas, a man’s father pulled a gun on doctors who wanted to pull the plug on his son, saving his son’s life. Not only did the son survive a stroke, he is now fully recovered. This happy ending may not be the typical outcome of a traumatic brain injury, but it is possible and this possibility gives me the creeps when I think about what could happen to me or someone I love under such horrible circumstances.

I recently met a former colleague whose daughter-in-law was written off as an organ donor, and only kept alive in order to save the baby she was pregnant with. Nobody told Cliff how bad the prognosis was, so he kept talking to her, squeezing her hand and asking her to squeeze back for about a month before she responded. Unfortunately, she is now severely disabled because she was given no physiotherapy to prevent her muscles wasting away, so she can no longer walk. In addition, her short-term memory is shot and she can’t talk either because of the ventilator that the hospital failed to remove on a timely basis. A 2012 article in the Toronto Star seems to suggest that if Mary Archer had died, her family might be better off and fails to nail the hospital to the wall for compounding their mistake by adding injury to injury. Instead of providing for the intensive therapy that could help Mary regain lost function, they’ve been throwing money at expensive lawyers to deny their liability.

Mary Archer is the woman who should have died, but she didn’t and the hospital who failed her has a moral responsibility to do right by Mary and her family now. Since her very life is a rebuke to both the hospital and the multi-billion dollar organ transplant industry, keeping Mary in the hospital that nearly killed her, where she subsequently suffered several falls which may have caused further harm should have been viewed as a conflict of interest. Mary should have been moved to a top-notch rehab facility as soon as possible and given every opportunity to recover as fully as possible and Mary’s family should not have to pay for this. Justice demands this at a minimum.

The multi-billion dollar transplant industry needs revisit the protocols on the ethics of declaring someone brain-dead, because they are currently killing people who could have recovered. I’m not signing my organ donor card unless and until I have confidence that I won’t be murdered in ER.